Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-02-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

09-02-25_TUESDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Yeah, a bit of a post-mortem conversation this morning here, and it has to do with what happened in the house yesterday. On Labor Day, Labor ended up getting hosed. I guess in taxes in the future, or at least not Labor Union members necessarily,

but people who actually work for a living. joining me is state representative dwayne yonker hello dwayne is great to have you back on morning good morning bill you're back home which means that uh the house sonny died and i didn't even realize that that the house could say okay we quit we're gone and then just uh turn over the big tax increases over to the senate for work isn't that right that's what happened yesterday that's what that's what happened yep the student um did their second reading yesterday after we were done, and they'll do their third today, I would assume, and vote. So the senators will be up there and see what happens.

I don't know how many are showing up. I don't know any of that. Okay. Isn't there, what happens, though, if the Senate decides that there need to be more changes or amendments to it? Does that mean that the House would then have to be called back in session to take a look at that, or does it not work that way? Like, I'm thinking of Congress, the way Congress can do it. You know, it gets changed, and then both sides have to agree on it.

Well, excuse me, yeah, normally we stay there and we, it goes to the Senate and then we see if they're going to change, but, you know, they had, it's a joint committee, so they already voted on out of committee what the bill would look like. So the bill just went to the House and the Senate at the same time, but it has to go, the budget, the one that has to start always, the budget always has to start in the House because we did the budget. So the actual bill was the LC2 or whatever it is. Yeah, that was debated in a joint committee and everything, so there's not going to be any changes to it. So, I mean, the kind of fix is already in. So it's all over except for the final voting. That's really all we're talking about right now.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. What do you think went right in or went wrong in the situation? I'm kind of curious, how many Republicans chose to show up on Saturday? I know that you were in Salem, but you did not gavel in. You were kind of keeping an eye on this, because the only possibility of probably stopping it would have just been to make sure there was no session. But that didn't work, and we weren't sure that was going to go anywhere anyway, right?

Or maybe you have a different feel about it. Yeah, so the session started on Friday, and only four Republicans showed up. And that's why it didn't finally get through to have a quorum until about after 8 o'clock on Friday night because the Democrats did not bring enough people, enough of their people to have quorum. The deal was we would only provide four, the Republican side, and they were missing one. and so then it went into a discussion of what what republicans are going to get for giving you one more person um again i was there well you you certainly know what happened afterwards you you weren't one of the four of that day and they're coming in now the agreement to provide quorum so that business could be conducted in the house then what kind of deal if any and maybe give you your evaluation of

it, was ended up made in exchange for having at least four Republicans and possibly more in order to provide quorum. What happened over the weekend? I know there were a couple of amendments. I don't know if there were any other ones that happened between now and then. No, the dash 17 and the dash 18, it sunset the payroll tax and the increase, and then the dash could not adjust it without, the dash was able to, in the original bill. Yeah, what's Dwayne, what does DAS mean? I'm sorry, you have to, I don't know. Yeah, the Department of Services, they're like administrative services.

Okay. So they dast does all the admin stuff for all the different places. So that's kind of what DAS does, all your administrative for all the different state branches of service. So an unelected bureaucrat, so what you're telling me then is that in the bill, an unelected bureaucrat was supposed to then decide if the gas tax goes up there or down, right? Isn't that what the deal was? Yes, that was correct. I know I always like to put tax hikes in the arms of unelected government workers. That's great. Okay. Yeah, so we got, forgiving one more person.

Now, you got to remember, there was seven Republicans that wanted to be there, that wanted to be on that floor. You know, I'm just, you know, tell you how the facts were. Yeah. Um, either people like, we're not. But the, the leader, you know, Drazen got only four to show up. Now, there was some other Republicans that were outside the building waiting if a deal was made to get something, you know. Um, so the, the deal, I had five caucus meetings on Friday, five of them, virtual caucus meetings. Wow. And so we, they allowed these, amendments to be a happen. We provided a fifth person because they had someone out of the country, you know, it's an emergency session. They had some another country. Well, that person came back,

and on Sunday, we were only provide, and we made a deal, well, the Republican cause that we'd only provide a certain amount again. And I said, I would never be on the floor to provide quorum. So I did come up Sunday, but I didn't come on the floor Sunday or yesterday until quorum was met. And then yesterday, they had to provide all 36 of their Democratic members. Not one of them could be gone. That was the deal. Did they all show up, then? They all showed up. Okay. So we want them on record. We wanted every single Democrat to be on record voting. What is, was it as good a deal as could have been accomplished, you know, given the, because you know how this was sold here, Dwayne. This was sold to the people that, you know, essentially that if you don't screw the regular

people with insanely higher taxes, including employers too, for that matter, we're going to legislatively or financially shoot all of the snow plows in the engine block, and so they won't be able to plow over the winter in the mountain ranges and things like that. That's the way it was sold. It's kind of like, you know, past these tax increases or the kid gets it, you know, that sort of thing? No, you're reading, that's what the Democrats want you to believe. Now, I went deeper in my speech, and you can see my speech. It talks about inflation and, you know, impact of inflation where we should be. You know, 10 years ago, our budget was

$68 billion, 10 years ago. Today, it's... almost $140 billion. I would dare say that's probably higher than the rate of inflation and population growth. I'm just taking a spitball guess. Yeah, we should be around $107 billion. So we're $32 billion over where we should be. Like, in Colorado, they can't go past that inflation, population versus inflation. They have it in their law, not here in Oregon.

We're $32 billion over where our... And the reason why we're over there is because we're spending too much money on, you know, climate justice stuff and homeless industrial. And by the way, all the climate BS ended up sticking in this O.D. bailout budget in the special session. Isn't that right, Dwayne Yonker? Yes, yes. That is exactly right. You know, so it's not about we need to fix roads. Yeah, we all agree. We need roads. I mean, there's not a person saying we don't need roads fixed and they need to be, you know, plow or whatever. we're upset that you're spending our money on things that are non-necessities.

You know, you talk about budget your family. I talk about budget in my family, and I cut the waste out to be in my budget. That is not what government in Oregon does. We just keep asking taxpayers to pay more. And I think that's exactly what all the people that wrote in, everything, there was a stack, and you could see in my picture, it's overwhelmingly people do not want more taxes. They want you to prioritize what's important.

And by the way, I would have to think that it wasn't just Republicans that didn't want their gas taxes and all the other fees going up. I don't think it's just Republicans, or am I wrong about that? Well, I agree. There's not, I mean, I don't know. No one wrote in their emails and all those testimonies whether you're a Republican or Democrat. I think this both sides, I thought it was funny that they had this protest yesterday. You know, I mean, I'm always posting about it.

Oh, yeah, you know, the, oh, this is the, you know, workers off a billion. The workers of a billionaires protest, right? But at the same time, their party just screwed over the workers. In Salem, on their gas taxes and everything else. I know. It's just insane. It's insane that they don't even see it. I'm like, billionaires are going to be fine.

It's the common folks like my young kids that are adults, you know, to make ends meet. These people, you just couldn't write it any better than that protest. Sorry. State Representative Dwayne Yonker with me. Dwayne, I just wanted to ask you then. I kind of want to circle back around to the deal that was made. There were the two amendments. One was that the Department of Administrative Services could not raise the taxes, right?

But they could lower it, right, without going to the legislature. Did I understand that deal the way it was portrayed correctly? Yeah, they could not adjust it years out. So if it needs to be adjusted, it has to go back to law. legislator. Okay. You know, as it should be, because, you know, the legislature has the power to impose a tax and they should be, you know, have some say on that. I'm glad. So that's a good thing. Now, as far as the, what was it, the payroll tax, they doubled the payroll tax from 0.1% to 0.2%.

This goes to transit. And what really irritated me about this is that most of that money goes to Portland, right, to pay for their light rail and all of their other insanely expensive excesses. Is it not? Is that not the case? Or am I wrong about that? That's the case. And, you know, I was talking to some Democrats. It's funny. When you get to talk to Democrats and they'll, oh, our buses are pretty empty too. No, yeah, our buses down here are empty too. You know, it's like, no one's riding these things. We're paying, it's so expensive for public transportation. And why does the public have to pay? Why does it? Why does it? tax, why do you bill have to pay for someone else to write a bus?

Well, that seems to be the way that the system is designed. I was checking my property tax statement the other day. It's about $100 a year. Linda and I pay on just property taxes for the RVTD because they have a district here in Jackson County. And yet they are cutting service hugely, starting today, as a matter of fact, due to Grant Stream funding being delayed or dropping off from the federal government. But you know what that's telling me, Dwayne, is that our transit districts everywhere around the state of Oregon just expanded hugely under a slurry of government grant stream funding, and they don't pay for themselves, from what I can tell.

They're nowhere close to even paying for the costs of their system. Am I wrong about that? It just seems that way. No, no, no. And there was a senator on Sunday in the committee meet really said the quiet part out loud is they're trying to force people to ride bikes and buses. That's what they want. You know, under climate, that's –

Bill, you need to catch a bus to go to work with the radio shooting in the morning. Somehow I doubt that RVTD is going to be running at 415 to get me to work here, Wayne. Just telling you. Exactly. So it doesn't make – and they talk about – they always want to – to use the rural people. The rule people. Like, they know anything about the rule people. Even Pam Marsh was talking about the rule people. What rural people? What are they saying about the rural people? What are they saying about that?

Oh, we need this transportation for the rural people. They have no way to get to their doctor's appointments and work and, you know, all these things. But if you look at the percentage of using them, it's not enough. Maybe there is a few that need it. But the, the, the cost. We broke it down. What this bill is about $79,000 for two years for a family. That's how much we're paying through this taxes, through this whole budget for the state of Oregon. Okay, so how much per family? How much per family? Seventy-nine what now? $7,900 for two years. Okay, now you mean $7,900. You mean $7,900. That has to be a typo, right? No. 70, if you broke the budget down to per family household.

Oh, oh, it's not that it's on their bill per se, but if you take all the money that was raised, which is coming from ultimately all of these sources. So it's not an instant 79. So, wow. Okay. Man. $79,000 for household that were spending, the state of Oregon. I mean, obviously some people in businesses and tax are, I mean, no wonder they're leaving

state of Oregon because they're just getting screwed. you know, that is a lot of money. But it's never enough, Dwayne. I guess that is the whole deal. So did the Republicans get a good deal in exchange for having provided quorum for this special session in the House here, Dwayne? What do you think? That is a hard question to answer. Yeah.

It really is. I am so torn. You know, I did want to provide quorum. I'm outnumbered. you know, I wouldn't, so that's why I went up there to speak. And I think we tried to get, we had three things we wanted as a group, and we got two of the three. I knew we were going to get screwed no matter what, you know, kind of like the Democrats in Texas that didn't, they finally came back in. We were going to get screwed no matter what. Same situation. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. You know, could we do better? Yeah. I would say we could have done better. I don't, you know, We never know what they would have settled for. And I wasn't part of the negotiation. I just, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm stuck. Okay. State Representative Dwayne Yonker with me. Dwayne, some people, I think, want to ask a question or two, and we'll just hit them and see what we got live without a minute.

Hi, good morning. You're on with Dwayne Yonker. Who's this? Morning, Bill, Tom here. Tom, you're with, Dwayne. What's up? Yeah, Dwayne, I'm just wondering, did the Republicans compile very factual,

list of all the waste that's going on to government right now. It looks like Tina, instead of actually paring down the excesses, you decided to go ahead and just raise the taxes. But I'm thinking about all the waste for climate change, for DEI, for wokeism, for all this, and you mentioned the buses there, what a huge waste of money that is. It just seems like this. this government here is just run amok and it's not doing proper things that any family would have to do to... Okay, well,

let's see if we... Yes. We had this. Dwayne, you know, did the caucus ever come up with a list of, you know, here's the waste and we could do without this, or was it just... I do not have a waste. I can tell you some of them, like, seating justice, which we know that

that whole... There's like a cycle. If you really look deep into it, I don't have all that in front of me here, and I don't... I know we know some things. Because it's really hard. Some of them are hard to find. They're so deep embedded in some of these bills. But, you know, we're giving money to these NGOs or whatever they do, and then these money comes back into the Democratic Party. I mean, just look at the unions. It's a scam. That's what it is. You know, when I was looking at or watching some of the testimony and reading about it, though, it seemed like the only people who were really in favor of these tax increases at the state legislative session were either working for ODOT or running like Jackson,

Roads Department and various other places, but that was about all that I could detect there. Everybody else says no. I guess so much for our democracy here, Dwayne? Is that it? I agree with it. It was municipalities, you know, that got money from the people, ODOT workers. Those were the majority. And there was a few here and there.

But, I mean, we had a giant stack of, I think, you know, of all the nodes. They're very clear. And most of the people are talking about their fixed income. They're fixed income now that it's going to hurt them. And they're like, well, they don't pay payroll because they're retired. Well, they do pay gases, gas tax. They do re-wrejected their car. And so it is going to hurt them.

This is about $500 per household a year for family. So there's another $500 add-on just from the state. Yeah, it's $500. It doesn't go for school books or anything. anything else that they might need more than raising taxes to bail out O'Don, I guess. We're with state representative of DeWilier. Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah, we're with state representative, Dwayne Yonker. Hi, good morning, caller. You're with Dway. You got a question? Go ahead. Yeah, Scott from GP. Yes, Scott. Two things.

One, first off, you know, which you might do, Dwayne, is every time you go to vote on something, remind the people there at Salem that coveting other people. money is a wrong thing, and they should consider that they're doing that and do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Okay. I appreciate that, Scott. Does doing the right thing or the moral thing ever come into this conversation about taxes, Wayne?

No, no, no, no. I gave two speeches, one was on Saturday, and I actually talked about 1st Samuel 8, and it talks about having a king and taking all your, what happens, and this is what happens. the government just keeps taking, and now you become a slave to them. And I said it right to all of them. And they, the fix was in before we walk the government. All right. Let me grab one more call here before we take off.

Hello, you're on with Dwayne. Who's this? Morning. Hey, Dwayne. This is Eric, Bill. This is Eric. So we talk about the tax hikes and everything, but we're not really, it's hard to find out what is it going to affect us on Main Street.

I mean, what's going to be the cost to us each of our individual? households. Isn't that what you said, $500 a year? Yeah, it's approximately about $500 per household. You're paying more. Yeah, about $500 per household per year, Eric. Does that make sense? Yes, it's all right.

Now I know how much they're passed on to my customers. All right. Yay. Well, it might even be more because, you know, if you have a business or something like that, I don't know how much fuel you're going to use, your registration for your vehicles. You have a fleet of vehicles. I mean, it can even be more. I mean, we're talking about an average household, you know, mom, dad, maybe some kids.

Yeah, and when you end up adding up things like, well, Eric obviously runs a business then, so he's going to have to pay not only the increased registration fees and titling and everything else for the company vehicles, but he's also going to have to pay the doubled payroll tax for transit, right? Yeah, double payroll tax. Your registration for your cars is going to basically double. All this stuff's going to double. So you've got to remember that fuel tax that we have to, like 52 cents of it is going approximately, is going back to pay for debt.

So we're paying for past mistakes, in other words, right now. Yes. Yes. Our children are paying for the issues we've caused. Final question I have for you, Representative Younger, is there anything in this special session bill, LC2, which will be passed by the Senate? it this week, no doubt. Is there anything which actually reforms Oregon Department of Transportation to raise the accountability and the ability to rein in spending in the future? Anything? There is a portion of there for accountability. I, you know, this is me, my opinion,

as just looking at the accountability in the state, I just think it's false. It's not going to be the real accountability. So I would hope I'm wrong, but there is an accountability piece in there. But we've looked at the accountability that has happened throughout, you know, time. And you've got to remember, in 2017, this was a very similar bill that we wouldn't have to raise taxes again, the fund ODOT. Here we are. So we have a history of saying, okay, we're going to clean up ODOT, and then we don't,

but we keep the tax increase. Got it. Yeah. State Representative Dwayne Yonker, appreciate that. welcome back to Southern Oregon. It's better when you stay down here, okay? My stress is less down here. All right.

Take care, Dwight. We'll talk to you later, okay? Bye. Bye. It is 733 at KMED, 993 KBXG. By Coastal Media's 2025 Best of Southern Oregon magazine presented by Dusty's Transmissions is available. Visit best of southern Oregon.com to view the new magazine online

and pick up a copy all around the valley. At the Point Pub in Medford, Halamus Bodec in Central Point. Sherm's Thunderbury. Great to be back after 9, 10 days away, sleeping till 7 or 8 in the morning. I'm going to tell you at 3.30, it was kind of like looking at, how do I get up this time of day?

How could I do that? How could I do that? Fortunately, I did, manage to make it in here. I don't know if there's enough coffee this morning to get me back in the swing of things. But I'm glad to have our former state senator, I should say, Herman Berchiger back on here. A little bit of the House ends up Sinney dying yesterday, Herman.

I was talking about that with state rep, Dwayne Yonker, and he's definitely wound up and a little hot and bothered about what went on. And what do you think? Give me your take, having been there on the Senate side, which is going to pick it up next. Well, listen, Kotech knew she had all the votes she needed

before she even went in, before she even called the special session. The governor's not going to call a special profession unless she has the vote. So that was already baked in the mix. Okay. Yeah. So nothing surprises. Nothing surprising for me at all. All right.

I asked Dwayne if the two amendments that ended up being supposedly the deal-making that the Republicans got in exchange for providing quorum, if that was a good deal. and I understand Dwayne probably doesn't want to get too rough on things because he has to live and work in that town right? You know, it's kind of the way it goes.

You have to be careful what you say. You've got to be politicized. That's why they call them politicians. But how do you evaluate it, given your experience, as in the state Senate and beyond? What do you think? The result of this special session

just levied $5 billion on the burden of the person that gets up and goes to work every day. I don't think Republicans got anything. Even with that ability to eliminate or to sunset the payroll tax in 2026, that was one of the amendments, isn't that a win that the payroll tax for transit could go away, two years completely? Could. You said the magic word could. Yeah.

If they still control the legislature in 2028, they'll do whatever they. please. Oh, okay. So it goes away in 2026 and then instantly comes back the moment that they convene another session. Is that it? Yeah, it doesn't have to go away. It's not mandatory. It goes away. So... And it's not mandatory that it goes away permanently, right? Exactly. Okay. And what they basically said was, we'll take a look at it at 28. That's basically what

they did. So Republicans agreeing to provide quorum for that, they provided quorum for vaporware, what they would say in the software world. This is something which isn't exactly real for an existence. Something like that. But, you know, the denial of quorum, all it does is delay, and we learned that. We were really successful back in 17 and 19 or 19 and 20. Yeah. But, you know, we stopped cap and trade, but we have cap and trade now. We essentially delayed it as what ended up happening, right? Yeah, yeah.

And so the only way to stop the insanity in Oregon is to change who's in charge. It's really that simple. The problem with changing who's in charge is that the more insane Oregon gets, the more people who are not insane end up heading forward. the doors. I can't tell you how many times they get emails and calls from people that are saying I don't know how much longer I can handle it here, Herman. You know, that's a, that's a tough one. That's a tough one to make happen, isn't it? Yeah. You know, California, we're just extending the northern California border to the northern Oregon border is what we're doing. Yeah, we just

do what California does. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. I wanted to ask you, Have you kept track of that California situation, which they're going to do a redistricting of their Congress critters or of their people, so that they gain five Democrats? And that would seem to mean that, you know, that would be getting rid of Doug Lamalfa, I guess is what they would be trying to do in Siskue County. Because I guess the talk is that they want to take a little slice of the Bay Area and shove it up into the Siskue County area. That's something I was reading about. Isn't that kind of like a reaction to what happened in Texas? Well, yeah, California has already done some pretty extreme redistricting, but now it's going to, it's the ultimate extreme. I mean, this is just getting absolutely insane.

So, you know, Texas does it. You know, red states do it, blue states do it. I'd say the blue states are better at it. That's just my opinion. You know, I was reading an article here, Herman, that, in fact, I'm going to. have to dig it up. I should have thought about that before you came on this morning. But it talked about how Republicans or red states or red areas have a much more difficulty, or a much more difficult time, even if they gain political power of actually dismantling the opposition

party's structure within the government system. Would you agree on that? I thought it was a pretty interesting take. I think it was in the American mind. It is. You know, I'd take. It's It'll take quite a while. I mean, you know, a lot of good things are going on with the Trump administration, but if we don't carry this on for another 12 years, we're just going to go right back to where we started. You know, you're following me? Yeah. No, I am.

It's like, you know, you take one step forward and then two steps backwards if you don't, you know. So these things, we've got, you know, the Republicans have got this stay in charge for a long time to undo some of this madness. And it is. It's madness. And, you know, I've said it how many times, you know, nice people doing good things with other people's money. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, and that's just it. You don't hate the Democrats across the aisle.

They're just wrong. I mean, you don't hate them. You've made that clear, you know, for the most part. Oh, yeah. No, no, I have a lot of Democrats friends. I just disagree with them on the issues. And they look at things through different color lens, you know. You know, conservatives look at giving more power to the individual, and the liberals say,

hey, it's my job to make sure everybody's safe. So, you know, it's just two ways of looking at the world. And then, of course, you get the radicalized on both sides, Bill, okay? Right. But that's really what's going on is, you know, conservatives are more hands-off, let people live their lives. And liberals are, hey, I know what's good for you. Let me help you. It really is.

I wanted to run up a couple of questions by you. One of them about the Trump administration. And I'm just kind of starting to feel a little bit of a cautionary hair rising on the back of my neck on a couple of actions. I'll do that here in just a minute. But what about, what do you think is overall going to be the reaction in the real world with the raising? of all these taxes and fees here in Oregon. Will we see any impact on the ground, in your opinion, or will it be kind of the standard thing in which the voter just goes,

can't fight City Hall on this. It's just more expensive. I'm just going to have to work harder, and I'll just have to vote harder next time. Because, you know, a lot of times I swear the Republicans would be like, well, you know, we'll just let things get bad enough, and then they'll figure out that they have to change it politically. I've seen no evidence of that having worked in the past.

What's the you? What's the definition of bad enough? Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, this bill, if you really look at it, I mean, not only will our gas be taxed at 46 cents a gallon, all of the compressed gases will, you know, your natural gas, your propane, everything, that's all going up. Oh, I didn't know that. So that also include, now, is that just for road use or even like your Vista utility? You know, you have propane or natural gas, too?

for road use oh for road use okay all right yeah yeah so that that all goes up you know that the the truckers i wouldn't say they got a win out of it i'd say they got a reprieve maybe well because part of this was also to make the uh the taxes the over-the-road taxes more fair between the trucking industry and the standard everyday motorist right yeah and and that that probably should have taken place. But, you know, the unattended consequences of that, it's going to put more responsibility on the person that gets up and goes to work every day. You know, then they got the electric per mile volunteer tax, or you can pay $340 a year. One thing that scares me, well, a lot of things scare me, but one thing is very concerning is it also gives ODOT the ability

to develop, implement, and administer a toll program on the roads. So we'll see how that all goes. Well, that means that they would want to force ORIGO on everyone because the golden, the wet dream of the Oregon Department of Transportation traffic planners would be to have everybody chipped. So that way, time of use. You want to get into a city at a certain time of day? You're going to pay more per mile, right?

That's the way I see it. That's right. Yep, yep, all of that. And now the technology is there to do it, see? So, and then payroll tax up 100%, it's up 100%, so it's two-tenths of one-tenths of a percent. And that's, you know, that's a line item deduction on your paycheck, you know? Yeah, that's not something that the, that's not something the employer's paying, right? That's something that the actual worker pays and only the worker?

Yes, the worker pays 100%. And that's for all these buses running around, but, you know, very few riders. So, you know, if a bus ride is calculated to cost $10 to get you from A to B, the rider pays $1, and everybody that has a lunchbox pays the rest. I find a fascinating. Last time I ended up going into the Road Valley Transit District's books a number of years ago. Now, this was a number of years ago. If I took the number of rides and people and just divided it in,

which is the way you have to look at the budgeting, right? know, what is the actual cost for one person to take that ride into downtown Medford or to go from Medford to Ashland, et cetera, et cetera. And I recall something about $17 was the figure that sticks in my mind. And that was something like 10 years ago that we were looking into something like that. I doubt it's that. I doubt it's less than that now. And I just don't know. I think one of the issues that we're going to have to come to Jesus, you know, over the coming weeks is that, and months and years is that what is the job of a transit agency and is the job of a transit agency to have half million dollar electric hybrid buses shuttling people at 17 to 20 dollars a cost per

ride or is it about getting people from point A to point B at the least amount of cost possible you know what I'm here you know the way they're trying they they want to supplement it so that people ride the buses and this whole falls into the environmental playbook, and that's get people out of their automobiles. I've always said it. I've said it 10 years ago. I says, we can get gas to $10 a gallon. They will have accomplished their goal of getting people out of cars and into mass transit.

That seems to be the real world. But if it was really about getting people from point A to point B, my gosh, you could probably do that with the Uber world, just kind of like an Uber pass of some sort, taxpayer subsidized, wouldn't you? I mean, you wouldn't have to buy the infrastructure, you wouldn't have to hire the employees. I mean, I'm just kind of curious if this is something which gets lost in all of this conversation of what is a transit company? What is a transit company supposed to do? Yeah, and it is, and that's move, move people. Now, you go back to the 50s, the average household had a car, and now look today.

Look, how many cars the average household has? several. So they want to get rid of as many of these automobiles as they can, but at the same time, they've got to make it so people can move around. So this accomplishes their goal. And I do. I predict that we're going to get gas to the point where a lot of people just stop driving. They have to do that to accomplish this goal. That's not a bug. That's a feature of the system here that Democrats, for the most part, are working on. So they're marching in the direction that they want to go. They're not there yet, but they're marching in that direction.

All right. Former State Senator Herman Barrettiger with me. Herman, I wanted to touch on something completely different here now. I wanted to switch over to some of the Trump administration's actions. And I wanted to – now, everyone's looking at how things have gotten better in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, even though a judge just said that that Los Angeles deployment of the National Guard was illegal. but that's yet another judge. We'll see where it ends up going. And now there's talk about them bringing National Guard troops to Seattle, Portland, Chicago, is the next one that everyone's screaming and whining about.

Now, they're screaming and whining because, you know, police and crime are high, and it's been very ineffective in these blue hive mine states and they're in their cities. So I think we can all agree on that right now. They're whining about it. but a deeper point here do you think as a point of civil liberties that under the guise of getting rid of crime

that we're going to be desensitized or you know normalizing having National Guard on our city streets at some point what do you think about that that's something that which is bugging me in the back of my brain here that's all

well I will tell you it is a little bit concerning and I have to agree with you. But I will tell you, there's so much polling going on by the Trump administration. It'll make your head spin. And every time he does an action, he's already done the polling to make sure he has overwhelming support from the citizens. Yeah, but overwhelming support to bring in what could be abused in the future as a police state, more of a police state, is not something that you're going to be polling most people on. I don't think most people connect dots that.

far. They're just going, hey, it's really bad right now. Do whatever it takes, you know? Right. That's exactly what's going on. You know, and I can see it. You know, some of these people live in the inner city. Now, I haven't been in the inner city since I did a couple tours when I was in the Senate of Los Angeles and stuff. And, you know, it's a very scary place to live. It's very scary. There's something going on bad all the time. And so I can see when you do polling in those areas, it probably pulls, hey, clean us up. And, you know, I mean, statistically what he's done in D.C. is positive. But you are, you do, you know, our military is really not designed to police our citizens.

That's really not the intent of the military. So it is. There's some concern there, Bill. Okay. All right. I didn't. I was just wondering if I was crazy sometime. I think, boy, I just got something in the back of my head. You know, it's like we always get concerned. And, of course, I remember, you know, huge overreaches under the Biden administration during COVID time. Remember that, you know, get the jab or else you're out on the street. That's what they were looking to do.

Look what General MacArthur did after World War I in Washington, D.C. When all the World War I veterans came to protest, they didn't get their money for fighting in the war. And that was some really rough and tumble stuff. between the veterans and the military. I mean, the military burnt down their tent cities. And, I mean, it was, it was, it was pretty bad. Yeah, my concern, though, about many Republicans is that Republicans, we will tend to turn a blind eye.

I'm speaking of looking at experience through the war on terror and various other things. We do a lot of soldier and police idolatry. and and we'll excuse things that get done by police quite often as a group that could end up turning around and biting us in the behind someday. That's what I get concerned about. I'm trying to be balanced on my approach here. I agree. There's some concern there, but I guess we just have to see how far this goes. You know, I also believe that we've got some places in this country that are just absolutely out of control when it's.

comes to, you know, violent crime. Well, there's the Hegelian dialectic, right? You know, the idea is that there are shadowy people someday that want to really have that total lockdown, and so you let things get bad enough, and then the people, and then the people cry out for Caesar to come and make it all better. Well, once you... And I just, yeah, you know, like I said, the polling's there, so far I would probably be agreeable, but I'm like you.

I lift an eyebrow and say, hey, you know, what happens if this starts going in the wrong direction? Then what? Yeah, then we do. Then what do you say at that point? All right, Herman, well, I just wanted to run by you, okay? Always appreciate the talk. We'll leave you back as always. You'd be well. Yeah, next week, next week we're going to talk

about the climate protection program, which is basically the cap and trade that we defeated in 19 and 20 is back through administrative order by the governor, and so we'll give you a lowdown of how sneaky the Democrats really are. I look forward to the breakdown of it, Herman. Thank you very much, former state senator.

Okay? Be well. All righty. Bye-bye. Herman Barichigger, 756, KMED, 993 KBXG. Let's see. Dollar has continued to sink in its value, and that's, of course, what a lot in Washington, D.C. want to happen because, well, does make our are exports a little more affordable, you know, when your dollar, when your currency value goes down. Who, though, does it hurt at home? Well, that's people like you would mean want to try to put away a buck or two. It's just the reality of it. And so how can you fight back?

Well, one way people have been doing this for thousands of years. It's a physical gold, physical silver, precious metals, physical things that are, you know, not owned by the bank and not devalued by the government or the Federal Reserve. or anything else like that. And I'm looking at the value of gold has been reacting in reaction to tariff on certainties, the U.S. dollar going down and people piling into other things. Gold this morning at 3511, silver at $40.74. This is a big deal. And there are many people that are saying this is just the beginning of the metals just running like crazy

in reaction to financial realities in the system. So where do you get that? Maybe you're looking at gold. Maybe you got this. Maybe you bought silver back at five bucks. And you're saying, hey, you know, $41 right now, I'm ready to sell. I'll take it over to Jay Austin and company, gold and silver buyers in Ashland and Ashland and 1332, Ashland Street in Ashland, 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass. Call 4827-15 for your appointment if you wanted to do that.

Gold at 3511 this morning. And it has just been exploding. And it's like I said, is this going to be? a permanent thing? I don't know. Maybe you're a seller at these prices. Maybe you're a buyer too because you're kind of thinking about what could be happening in the future. Well, talk to the recognized experts, Jay Austin, and they'll

help you out. Either side of these, I think. Good people. Supporters of Talk Radio, too. One of my oldest sponsors. Jay Austinbrokers.com, fortune reserve.com. That's fortunereserve.com for Jay Austin. Service is the difference with sweetwater sanitation. Your experts for sanitation services

and portable restrooms. From pumping septic tanks, grease traps, even hold It's everything for your digital life. The Kim Commando Show, live Saturday morning 7 to 10 on KMED. Welcome to the Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. 8 o'clock, this is KMED, and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford. Coming up, we're going to talk about getting woke out of the medical schools. What can be done about that, and returning meritocracy?

In other words, the best people become doctors, not the people that check the boxes best. You know, nobody, when they're going in for a brain surgery operation, is going up, you know, I'm hoping that we have, that I hope that I have the least qualified DEI hire, right? Or gender or whatever the case might be, right? You're the right gender. You're just hoping that you get the best, you know, the best person, oncologists, whatever the case might be. That's what you're looking for, right? Yeah, indeed. That a person wants to be anonymous, kind of going back with RVTD. Bill, my husband drove for RBTD for a few years and left because he realized not only how woke they were, but he would drive around an entire eight-hour shift with zero to one or two people. There was at best a person loading up with their cans to turn in, and rarely more than two people in general, if that. Also, we believe that they have very healthy reserves. It would be interesting to see the books.

we should be able to access this since we all have to pay them by law when they were insisting that he had to get the jab to remain a driver that was it peace out thank you anonymous I appreciate that I don't know if there are a lot of reserves there or not anonymous emailer but there is the possibility that they may have gone through them what is obvious though in all of our transit systems here is that they expanded and added a lot of

of roots and bought a lot of buses, and it was all fat and happy with the Grant Stream funding in the Biden administration. Not sustainable funding, though. And today we're finding out just how sustainable the local taxes that we're collecting along with the fares are able to go. It's not the nearest farm. Let me go to Dave. Hello, Dave. How are you this morning? It's Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. What's up? Yeah. Well, Friday, I got a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, and I asked the guy how much the bill is on it. because that's usually what the fine is, and he told me, they don't tell him. So I Googled it.

It turns out it's 20 bucks. Really? For first time offense. That's the bad news. Boy, it's more than that in Oregon, I believe. I think it's a lot more than that in Oregon. Oh, yeah, a lot more. And they don't give you a break.

Now, it's progressively if you don't wear your seatbelt, then the fines can go up if you get cited again. Okay. But the first offense is 20 bucks. All right. Well, it's good to know that California doesn't care about safety. Oregon does care about safety and money. Right. Well, Oregon, they use it for revenue. But I've got some good news.

Yeah. Yeah. In October, I'm going to a hard rock mine to go help with mining. Now, I won't be going underground because it's a hard rock. But I'll be running a hopper opening and closing it and then kind of be security they're building a cabin for me right now. You know something, Dave, I'm going to give you a real, a real American salute. Because for years, people have been right to me and saying, where is Miner Dave mining? And I said, well, he hasn't been.

So now you're going to be mining again. At least you're helping out, right? Yeah, I'm working for somebody else, and I can't say anything about it. All right, but still good. It's positive. I'm glad to hear that. So that's a pebble in your shoe and a good thing, a pebble being removed in your life. I like that.

Appreciate the call. Thank you for that. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hi. This is Wayne Grants Pass. Hey, Wayne.

What's up? So in reference to your concern about the Federal National Guard and the military. So this is my opinion. First, you do everything you can to get rid and disarm the public, Second Amendment. Yeah. So then you're dependent on the local police. Then you defund the local police, so they're no good. So now you're dependent on the...

the state and the state level, and eventually the governors are in charge of the National Guard and the president. So you have turned all the authority to protect yourself over to the federal government. You know, something, it sounds, Wayne, like you're able to connect dots there. In other words, part of a plan, you think, is what is really going on. Absolutely. All right. Appreciate the call on Pebble and your shoe Tuesday.

I'll grab one more before news. Hi, good morning. Who's this? this is jean jean welcome back are you grumpy or not today sure well let's put it this way i'm not grumpy but um the gas tax is just a way to make good old slaves and homeless people

well the homeless people have to grab up some more bottles right well they need to make more people homeless because they can't afford to pay for it So, all right. And if they give us the money that it takes, we could hire a taxi cab every time we want to go someplace. They actually come to your house, take you up. I've often wondered if anyone has done how to get there.

I'm curious, though. You have something else I wanted to say. Okay, well, go ahead. I'm running out of time, so you can help me out, please. Okay. As for your replacement? He, according to him, the school shooting happened Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, and it was always yesterday. So, I mean, he could drop it, and as far as that goes, why should he jam his religion down everyone's throat?

He doesn't even have it right. He worships Jesus. Okay, fine. Yeah. But God is not. now who is it that said my only begotten son okay i guess what what point you're trying to make there jean in all seriousness because uh you know this was a catholic this was a catholic school that was attacked and it was a catholic school it was horrible yeah but instead of having it

yesterday all the way along try putting it as for the day that it happened and instead of being yesterday by this time i had like okay what day did it after okay well yeah it was like it was last week that's why i just said last week yeah i just said last week and okay all right uh well i have cd so i listen to cds because i got tired of his reruns all right uh i don't recall that but but But thank you for the call. Maybe that happened. I wasn't listening because I was trying to stay away from it all and, you know, sleep in. I couldn't help myself here, Gene.

Good to hear from you again.